Category: Blogs

Here's a nice post by Matteo Calabrese on the meaning behind the name of the Roman dramatist Plautus, with a reference back to the post I wrote on the Pietrabbondante tile in January. If you were wondering, his name is derived from a nickname meaning "flat-footed" - but as far as I know, we can... Continue Reading →

I'm not a skilled baker myself, but I highly appreciate baking excellence in others, particularly in the form of the Great British Bake Off. Tonight is, of course, this year's final (I'll be cheering for Nadiya), so it seems the perfect opportunity to plug some of my favourite Classics, archaeology and linguistics themed show-stoppers. Firstly... Continue Reading →

A great post here on the new Samnite grave in Pompeii by Virginia L. Campbell. She’s also posted about the Oscan epigraphy of Pompeii here. A new discovery at Pompeii is always an exciting event, and even more so when it’s from the ‘Samnite’ period of the town rather than its final destruction. I’m looking forward to hearing lots more about this new find.

Yesterday came a rather exciting announcement that a Samnite grave has been discovered in Pompeii. The details revealed thus far include that a skeleton, belonging to a woman approximately forty to fifty years old, complete with grave goods including numerous jars still containing traces of their original contents, has been excavated in an area beyond the Porta di Ercolano.

The Samnites were a native Italic people (much like the Latins who founded Rome), whose culture was similarly tribal, consisting of a loose federation of a number of groups who inhabited parts of central and southern Italy. They tended to live in some of the more mountainous regions of Italy, were sheep herders, and famed wool workers. They leave no written record of their own, but survive in the history of Rome written by Livy. His material, however, is heavily biased, as he was largely writing about the Samnites and…

This recent piece by the influential gender linguist Deborah Cameron really unpacks the difficulties of creating gender equality in all kinds of public discourse. People have given many relatively simple explanations for why women appear less frequently than men in public life, and why they say less when they do appear, but Cameron shows just how complicated... Continue Reading →